In recent years, the society is full of information such as information supplied via the Internet, as well as internal documents and external documents of corporations. How fast one can process such information is the key to an increase in work efficiency and higher performance at work. Personal computers have been used as major business tools. However, if mobile phones that can be carried around anywhere become capable of operating at a similar efficiency to the efficiency achieved with personal computers, the mobile phones will be regarded as the strongest tools as ever.
Fast reading is also regarded as one of the business skills. If one can perform fast reading, he/she achieves higher information collection speed, and accordingly, also achieves higher work performance. General users are also expected to read more often texts such as electronic books and news with mobile phones and the likes in the future.
In view of the above facts, there is a demand for development of a function that allows users, including people with fast reading performance of several thousands or tens of thousands of characters per minute, to efficiently view texts with mobile phones and the likes.
In such a case, when a user uses a mobile phone to view a text such as a mail or a document designed for viewing on a personal computer, it is difficult to read the text as fast as reading on a personal computer for the below-mentioned reasons.
First, each line of characters does not fit the screen size of a mobile phone, and a line feed is mechanically inserted to each line. As a result, it becomes difficult to read the text. More specifically, it becomes necessary to handle the scroll bar to scroll on the display screen and move the viewing area. This involves a complicated scrolling operation to scroll on the display screen.
Furthermore, when there are columns or the subject document has a two-column or three-column format, for example, the reader needs to often perform the operation to move the viewing position from the bottom to the top of a page or starts reading the top of the second column after reading the bottom of the first column.
Moreover, since the number of characters that can be displayed on the entire screen is limited, the operation to switch the viewing area on the screen needs to be often performed to read a large volume of texts created with a personal computer.
Furthermore, it is necessary to get accustomed to the key operations necessary for viewing, such as enlarged or reduced display. The already mentioned problems are caused mainly by the time loss due to such manual operations by the user.
To counter the above problems and circumstances, the following techniques have been suggested in Patent Documents.
Patent Document 1 discloses a data display device that increases the operability by improving visibility when scrolling through text data. The data display device disclosed in Patent Document 1 displays one line and scrolls to left. In this data display device, not only the shift time of the display dots but also the shift intervals can be changed.
Patent Document 2 discloses a data display device that can satisfy the needs of users while improving the operability in display format changing operations and character size changing operations. The data display device disclosed in Patent Document 2 displays the characters of one screen by scrolling backward from a state displayed in “large size/scroll view” and switching to “small size/normal viewing”, and displaying backward from the last character of the display contents at the time of the scroll display.
Patent Document 3 discloses a portable information device that facilitates changes by a user in the portions to be displayed in an enlarged view of the information displayed as a list. The portable information device disclosed in Patent Document 3 displays a total display screen and a partial enlarged screen as well as a file name display column on the display screen. The total display screen is a screen to display the entire document that is currently being viewed. This total display screen also displays a magnified image, and the portion mainly showing the magnified image is enlarged and displayed on the partial enlarged screen. On the partial enlarged screen, scrolling to right is continuously performed, and, accordingly, the viewing position of the magnified image on the total display screen also moves to right.
Patent Document 4 discloses a portable terminal that allows a user to readily move the viewing area of text data and the cursor with one hand. The portable terminal disclosed in Patent Document 4 includes a CPU for performing main processing, a memory that stores data, a display unit that displays data on its display screen, and a display control unit that controls the display unit. This portable terminal displays the data too large to fit the size of the display unit by scrolling through the data on the display screen. This portable terminal also includes a tilt detection unit that detects the tilt angle of its main body tilting in a predetermined direction, and causes the display unit to display the scrolled display screen based on the tilt angle of the main body.
[Patent Document 1] Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2000-311045
[Patent Document 2] Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2001-022327
[Patent Document 3] Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2005-267049
[Patent Document 4] Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. H11-305918